I have recently installed ubuntu hardy and found that shell command completion with TAB doesn't work, the package 'bash-completion' is installed in my system. I guess it is related to dash being the default shell? Is there a way to use tab completion in dash? If there isn't a way then how can i change my default shell to bash?

Thus the question really isn't "Tab doesn't work", it's, "Running the wrong shell". Note that you can run bash from dash with "/bin/bash" and immediately see if the tab key works there. "exit" to get back to dash.
–
gbarryOct 24 '09 at 18:51

3 Answers
3

Dash shouldn't be the default user shell. That would make life much less convenient, because bash is way more usable in interactive sessions. You can check what shell you're actually running with echo $SHELL.

Have a look at /etc/bash.bashrc around line 32. Uncomment the enabling configuration.

I don't think "correct it" is the right phrase. "Change it" would be better. The ubuntu folks wrote up something explaining why they changed the symlink for sh to point to dash instead of bash wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh . It looks like bash is better for interactive site and dash is faster for running shell scripts.
–
Doug HarrisMar 12 '10 at 14:49